


To Hear Your Voice and Wonder What You've Been Through

by AnotherLoser



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 10:06:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9067102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherLoser/pseuds/AnotherLoser
Summary: In which I wondered about someone being able to hear Mick's thoughts while being trained as Chronos, and got a drabble out of it.





	

The first time it happened he was scared shitless.  It made no sense.  Breaking the perfect silence of Leonard’s room at night was Mick’s voice.   _Mick’s_ voice.  Leonard sat bolt upright, blinking, looking around as if there would be some sign of what was happening only to be met with absolutely nothing.  Nothing but his friend’s voice-  
_“What is this place…?”  
“Don’t touch me don’t fucking touch me!”_

His stomach twists into a knot.  It’s not a memory, it’s different.  He swallows thickly and asks, “Gideon, is there any audio playing?”  
“No Mr. Snart.”  
He’s losing his mind then.  Hearing things…

 _“Torture.  Fucking torture?  Sure, that’ll do wonders.”_  
His heart pounds in his chest, eyes stinging.  Nothing happens.  It’s silent for a long moment.  Several minutes pass and it does nothing to relax him.  Then it starts again and despite almost expecting to hear it, he jumps at the sound of the voice.   _“When do I get to eat?  Jesus..”_

It’s quiet for the rest of the night.

The next morning it gets him during breakfast.  He thought - hoped - it was all some guilt driven dream, he never laid awake in the first place, never actually heard anything.  Then he’s greeted with it again, wide awake as he eat with the rest of the team and he jumps out of his skin.  
_“A soldier.  They want soldiers.  Good fucking luck with that, your boy over there is scratching his arms so bad he’s gonna cut himself open.  What a soldier he’ll make.”_  
It doesn’t make any sense- except piecing together what he’s heard this far gives a scene; an idea of what was happening to Mick, wether made up or real.  It has to be made up though, doesn’t it?  They’ve never heard each other’s thoughts before—  
_“NO—“_

Leonard practically runs back to his room.  He feels sick at the sound in his partner’s voice.  It was guilt. It was guilt and made up in his head, it wasn’t real.  It couldn’t be real.  But as he paces his room with wide eyes and his fingers laced behind his head it continues, and it only gets worse as the minutes pass.  
_“Not him not him not him don’t hurt him!“_  
_“How…  How was that fake…?”_  
_“No- no more not again—“_  
_“Don’t touch them!”_

He’s broken, and pleading, and for all of their years together Leonard has never heard such a sound in his partner’s voice.  His breath shakes as he try to calm himself.  
“Gideon.  Can you tell me where Mick is?”  
“Just a moment, Mr. Snart.”  He waits with baited breath.

 _“These are the only weapons I get?  What the fuck good is it gonna do to have us kill each other?”_  
“I’m afraid Mr. Rory is unable to be tracked."  
“What…”  he breaths.  “What’s the most recent location you can give me?”  
“It seems he never left the area of our last landing before falling off the radar, so to speak.”  
He wants to be sick.  He’s not sure if he even can keep the contents of his stomach in there.

It goes on all day.  Every quiet moment has at least one message from his partner.  He claims to be sick and spends most of the time in the medbay despite how it was nothing physically wrong with him.  He asks Gideon to give him a checkup anyway, just in case.  Everything was normal and level aside from the stress revealed in his brain activity.  He could have said as much himself.  A few people came to check on him, but it helped nothing.  The voice kept coming.

 _“He did it.  He scratched into his fucking veins didn’t he?”_  
_“I’m dead, I’m dead I have to be dead, they can’t just…  They can’t bring me back, can they?”_  
_“Let me die this time please for the love of god kill me kill me kill me”_  
_“Please don’t make me I can’t I can’t hurt her I can’t—“_  
_“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”_  
_“How many more times?  How many before it’s someone else?”_  
_“That’s not what he meant…  That’s not what he fucking said you liars.”_  
_“Kill me kill me why couldn’t he have killed me- I can’t do it again why didn’t you just fucking shoot me, Snart!?”_

He can’t hide forever when there’s no telling when it would stop.  He sleeps in the medbay that night though.  Tries to swallow back his emotions.  In the morning it has to be back to normal, with or without the voice in his head.

It continued still.  
_“Regrowing limbs…”_  
_“I wonder if I kill myself enough times they’ll give up.”_  
_“I can’t I can’t I can’t—“_  
_“Useless…They got one thing right.  Useless.  Useless, destructive shit from the very beginning.”_  
_“I bashed my own head open and they still won’t give up.”_  
_“Rescuers…  Bullshit.  Fucking bullshit I’m useless but I’m not that desperate.”_  
_“New record.  Nice.”_  
_“He didn’t mean it like that…He couldn’t have- but he—“_  
_“Manipulative fucker.”_  
_“How many lies did I miss?  How many times did he- how stupid was I?”_  
_“Bastard..  How—“_  
_“All of them…They’re all bastards, call themselves a team.  We’ll just see who the moron is.”_  
_“Survive.  Win the fights, take the punishments, kill the simulations, grin at the praise.”_

He listens to his partner deteriorate over the course of days. He wonders how much time was passing for Mick. If anything was left out. The confusion is only present in the beginning. Then came the panic, the terror, the pleading and absolute misery, anger fitted in here and there. Then the anger grew. He argued in his head with whatever he was being told, but grew to accept it with bitterness and disappointment. Leonard hears fighting strategies, instructions for some kind of technology. Hears thoughts growing colder and colder, the emotions draining from his partner's voice. He hears anger rising, directed at everything around him. Everything behind him. He is filled with a hatred Leonard has never heard. Before it was quite so bad, it reminded him of himself. Leonard was the cold one, Mick was a hot head. It's how they always were. He remembers having similar thoughts and tones in regards to his father. Mick surpassed even that though. He stops complaining about pain, about dying, about losing limbs where previously he'd thought of it with concern and then bitterness. And then it just stopped.

Leonard tries to go about his day. He tries to keep up with missions when he's needed but sometimes he has to pause at what he hears in his head. He was skilled at self control, but even he is thrown off by the rapid and drastic changes in his partner.  
Nighttime might be the worst though; nothing to distract himself with, nothing else to try and focus on. It's just himself, his emotional exhaustion, his tired body. Sleep doesn't come.

Rather suddenly though, it stops.  
Not all at once- it trickles away. But the constant noise suddenly has gaps in between each thought, bigger and bigger silences until hours pass and he's still hears nothing.

[...]

Everything clicks into place when Chronos removes his helmet.

He regards Leonard with a hatred forced into him, a view of which one might have when looking upon their abuser fused with years of gruesome torture.  
Years of training, to become what he is.  
Leonard knows what happened to him, and yet still not what he's been through. Mick's perspective echoing in his head is of no use to him in his shock. Even after. Not really. Before he even says the words 'I know what happened' he is sure the result wont be any good; he knows some of what Mick had felt, no where near all of it he's sure once learning how long it had really been, but not what actions were done to cause such thoughts and feelings. He could do nothing now but hope his actions weren't about to get his baby sister killed.

[...]

Sara says to have a heart to heart with him. He doesn't know how.

[...]

When he finally does talk to Mick, his heart is hammering in his chest as he recount the details of the last few days. He schools his emotions well when explaining, "People seem to think we should have a heart to heart."  
"We don't have hearts, where does that leave us?" Mick replies.  
There's a brief pause, not more than a single beat, and yet within that time Leonard swallows thickly and comes up with something different than what he thought he came here to do. Something different entirely, if he's lucky.

"Here's the thing, Mick. We have a connection, you and I. One that apparently tied us together through time and space." Mick snorts, but Leonard continues unfaltering. "I heard your thoughts. Not all of them, obviously. Years for you were days for me but I heard a lot of things I never could have imagined hearing.. You begging for your life."  
He sees Mick's expression harden further as the words pass his lips. "Asking what was going on, asking me why I didn't kill you in the woods. Asking to stop being shown people dying. So on and so on. And I heard you denying whatever it is that they told you-" "I was stupid." "-and then I heard you accepting it. _I know_ , Mick. I didn't see it, but I heard it. I don't blame you for giving in. They tortured you and I don't even know how long. But whatever they said to make you hate me so much, it was a lie. You've been _brainwashed_."

"And you think telling me this is gonna change that?" Mick asks, but despite what he likely wants, he seems unsure.  
"No. I think that telling you this will help you decide what you want to do, and who you want to be."

He came into the room both nervous and resigned, aware that he may very well die. He would let Mick decide his fate, see if the real thing was different from what it sounds like he had been shown. Maybe it was the guilt, knowing the turmoil _his_ action caused his friend, having left him too many times in the past. Maybe it was a leap of faith that there was still his friend inside that cage. Maybe both.  
But when he leaves the room now, Leonard has a feeling he's done just as good.


End file.
